Caltech scientists show why anti-HIV antibodies are ineffective at blocking...(s with two arms is nature's way of ensur...)

As it turns out, this sort of double-armed binding is easier said than done--at least in the case of HIV.

In their PNAS paper, Bjorkman and Klein looked at the neutralization capabilities of two different monoclonal antibodies isolated from HIV-infected individuals. One, called b12, binds a protein known as gp120, which forms the upper portion of an HIV's protein spike. The other, 4E10, binds to gp41, which is found on a lower portion of the spike known as the stalk.

The researchers broke each of the antibodies down into their component parts and compared their abilities to bind and neutralize the virus. They found, as expected, that one-armed versions of the b12 antibody were less effective at neutralizing HIV than two-armed versions. When they looked at the 4E10 antibody, by comparison, they found that having two arms conferred almost no advantage over having only one arm. In addition, they found that larger versions of 4E10 were less effective than smaller ones. These results highlight potential obstacles that vaccines designed to elicit antibodies similar to 4E10 might face.

But b12 has its own obstacles to overcome as well. In fact, when the researchers looked more closely at their data, they realized that the benefits of having two arms--even for b12--were much smaller than those seen for antibodies against viruses like influenza. In other words, the body's natural anti-HIV antibodies are much less effective at neutralizing HIV than they should be.

But why?

"The story really starts to get interesting when we think about what the human immunodeficiency virus actually looks like," says Klein. Whereas a single influenza virus's surface is studded with approximately 450 spikes, he explains, the similarly sized HIV may have fewer than 15 spikes.

With spikes so few and far between, finding two that both fall within the rea
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